Previews

Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando

Wait, upgrades? Yes! Ratchet's weapons can level-up as well. In the quick-select menu (intact from the first Ratchet), each weapon icon now features a little meter under it. Killing baddies fills it up, and once you max the meter out the weapon will upgrade to a bigger, badder form. The useful but wimpy Lancer becomes the Heavy Lancer, with 35% faster firing rate and more damage potential. The area-clearing Gravity Bomb upgrades to the block-clearing Mini-Nuke, while the robot helper Synthanoids become missile-firing Ultranoids. They'd be scary if they weren't so loveable.

The leveling-up elements add a welcome new dimension to the gameplay. Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando is designed to have a steeper difficulty curve than the first game, so leveling the proper weapons early on will prove important in making speedy progress. And don't think you can get away with just using the wrench again. A bit into the game enemies will start taking ten or more wrench hits, so that old standby is going to stand by a lot more than it may have before. Luckily, it can be leveled-up just like the other weapons, so it'll always be useful for the weakest enemies, or for finishing off a bigger one. The guns are definitely essential this time out, though.

Many of the game's puzzles rely on gadgets to solve, and some of the new doodads are quite enjoyable. For example, the tractor beam can lock onto specially-marked objects, which you can then wrangle to wherever you might need them. One puzzle had a locked door that would only open when a robot was standing on a special floor plate. Accomplishing this via the tractor beam (the robot was quite reluctant), I proceeded onward. I soon reached another floor plate, but this one was elevated in such a way that I couldn't get the robot up easily.

This planet's so small you can see its curvature -- coolbeans.

The solution proved to lie in a strange, goal-post looking contraption in the center of the room. Upon dragging the robot near it, the device fired up and pulled the bot into its center. After some experimentation, it came to light that I could use the tractor beam to reel the now-suspended robot backwards, building up tension. Letting go, the robot "slingshotted" up onto the ledge, permitting me to solve the puzzle and giving me a degree of satisfaction. Another new gadget is the Electrolyzer, which brings up a Qix-like mini-game whenever you try to hack a control panel. It's novel, if not completely riveting.

The Clank sections are back, too, but this time Clank has more types of bots to command. The little fighting guys from the last game return, but now they'll be joined by bridge building and lifting bots as well. (I'm told there are more, but these are all I got to check out.) The Clank sequences feel more fleshed out now thanks to the newly revitalized puzzle opportunities afforded by the new bot types.

Of Backface Culling and Undershorts

You thought the city in the last was impressive, eh?

Like its predecessor, Going Commando will be a technological knockout. Insomniac's impressive PlayStation 2 engine technology, co-developed with Naughty Dog, is as powerful as ever. The main improvement is that the overdraw has been decreased, meaning that the game engine will save time by rendering fewer polygons that aren't visible to the player. The resultant speed increase lets it draw more polys that are visible, resulting in more detailed visuals overall. It goes without saying that the game will run at 60 frames-per-second, a remarkable achievement when it's shifting so many polygons in a scene. Even six months after the original was released, this remains the best graphics engine I've seen on any current console. It makes me wonder why so many Xbox and GameCube games run at 30 fps.

To make a long story no less long than it was before, Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando looks to be an excellent follow-up and upgrade to the popular plat..., err, character action game of 2002. If you liked the original, there's a heck of a lot more where that came from. And, if you didn't, there's still a heck of a lot more where that came from, and you should probably give it another go. In all, I think Ted Price summed it up best by saying, "Ratchet is not wearing underwear ... nor is Clank."